Posted on 11/22/2022 6:14:17 PM PST by Pilgrim's Progress
“Be not among winebibbers; among riotous eaters of flesh: For the drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty: and drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags. Hearken unto thy father that begat thee, and despise not thy mother when she is old. Buy the truth, and sell it not; also wisdom, and instruction, and understanding” (Proverbs 23:20-23).
The previous verse tells us to be guided in the right way. Here in this verse is a way that no Christian should be. These winebibbers are the wrong guides. A winebibber is one that has an unquenchable taste for liquor. Also avoid gluttons, “riotous eaters of flesh,” for both the drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty. Just carried away with their fleshly appetites. Some folks eat to live, other live to eat.
Try not to cultivate an obsessive love for food, it just leads to real problems in your life. Cultivate friends who will feed you in the way of righteousness—with spiritual food. Stay away from the wicked. It is a principle of separation.
There are some Christians who think that they are so strong and so spiritual that they can play around with people like that and not be affected by them. They are absolutely out of their gourd. “. . . a companion of fools shall be destroyed” (Proverbs 13:20). You just can’t do it. You can’t go into a mineshaft and not get dirty. People are foolish who think, “Well, I can take care of myself.” You can’t!
“For the drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty,” and if you are there on the day he does, you’ll go right down with him.
“. . . and drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags,” notice how drunkenness and gluttony leads to laziness. Overeating and drunkenness leads to laziness, and laziness leads to poverty. Poverty leads to the welfare office. America is the great enabler when it comes to codling ne’er-do-wells. Instead of poverty, people on welfare are rich compared to the working man that pays his taxes and bills. Our government pays women to have illegitimate children. It is a national disgrace and shame.
Don’t be a proud know-it-all, they have a lot more experience than you do. They’ve been down the road a few more times than you have. Pride will keep a young man from listening to his elders. It got Rehoboam in a mess. He wouldn’t listen to the older, wiser men in the king’s realm but chose instead to listen to the young men of his own age—and they steered him horribly wrong so much so that he lost the greater part of his kingdom.
“Buy the truth and sell it not,” actually there is no price: “Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price” (Isaiah 55:1).
That is the peculiar thing. He says to buy truth, but you can’t buy it. Do you realize that a lost man can buy every Bible in the city and it won’t give him light? A man might be able to afford to buy a thousand Bibles, but unless he submits himself to the One that wrote it, he’ll never understand it. Worldly people think peculiar things.
One fellow’s wife died and standing by the casket he said, “I really put her away nice. That is what she wanted, to be put away nice, and I did the best I could to obey her wish.” Now, that is one way to look at the end of life. I don’t think he cared so much about what kind of casket she was in; he was rejoicing that he knew that she was in heaven.
“Buy the truth and sell it not,” it is important to know where you are going when you die, and to have a personal relationship with the One that is going to take you there.
“. . . also wisdom, and instruction,, and understanding,” don’t forget that He bought you too. He redeemed you so you belong to Him, “Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood” (Acts 20:28).
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